Marketing's Role in Customer Change Management
The Strategic Challenge of Business Model Evolution
Legacy businesses face unprecedented pressure to transform their fundamental operating models, often requiring customers to abandon familiar processes in favour of entirely new approaches. This transformation challenge extends far beyond internal operational changes—it demands sophisticated customer change management that relies heavily on marketing leadership.
The most successful business transformations recognise that customer resistance represents rational concerns rather than mere reluctance to change. Customers invest significant time, resources, and institutional knowledge in existing systems, making any transition inherently risky from their perspective.
Marketing's role in these transformations has evolved from simple communication to comprehensive change orchestration, requiring leaders to balance transparency about challenges with confidence in future benefits.
Understanding the Depth of Customer Resistance
Modern business transformations often trigger customer responses that extend well beyond traditional commercial relationships. As John Watton, who has led marketing transformations at Adobe, VMware, and other tech giants, recently shared on an episode of Spotlight on B2B Marketing, "Customers are very resistant to change and often quite rightly for good reasons sometimes and and we've always had to face that when we've made pricing changes or changes to our packaging or we've retired products and things like that, which always happened in software."
However, the scale of resistance can surprise even experienced marketing leaders. When Adobe transitioned from boxed software to subscription services, the customer response exceeded normal business complaints. John notes, "But when Adobe made this change, tens of thousands of users lobbied Change.org, which is where you object to bypasses going through your local neighbourhood or or food regulation. There's an example of something that you were never expected in software to have to cope with these kind of social movements complaining about your pricing model."
This level of organised customer resistance demonstrates how fundamental business model changes can trigger emotional responses that transcend rational business considerations. Understanding this emotional dimension becomes crucial for marketing teams managing transformation processes.
Building Trust Through Transparent Communication
Successful transformation marketing requires establishing multiple channels for genuine customer dialogue rather than one-way communication. The most effective approaches involve creating forums, community groups, and user engagement opportunities that allow customers to voice concerns and receive substantive responses.
Host Karen Lloyd emphasises the broader implications of this approach: "Marketing is the voice of the customer and a lot of companies that's just not the case. Marketing is a, you know function that does some really good stuff and executes really well and is doing really sort of outbound inbound stuff. But you know, it doesn't really represent the customer."
This observation highlights a critical opportunity for marketing teams during transformation periods. By genuinely representing customer perspectives within the organisation, marketing can bridge the gap between business strategy and customer acceptance, ensuring that transformation plans account for real customer needs and concerns.
The subscription model transformation at Adobe required marketing to extend its focus beyond customer acquisition to encompass the entire customer lifecycle, particularly post-sale value realisation. This shift represented a fundamental change in how marketing teams measure success and allocate resources.
The Evolution of Marketing's Strategic Role
Business transformation creates opportunities for marketing to assume broader strategic responsibilities within organisations. Rather than focusing solely on lead generation and campaign execution, marketing teams can position themselves as customer advocates and change management specialists.
John confirmed this evolution: "Marketing gets brought more into understanding the customer life cycle, not the life cycle of acquiring a customer prospective customer, but the sort of post sale side and working with the teams, which was new for marketing then and you know there's still new for some marketing teams now who are really just asked to focus on lead Gen."
This expanded role requires marketing teams to develop new capabilities in customer success, retention strategy, and cross-functional collaboration. The transformation becomes an opportunity to demonstrate marketing's strategic value beyond traditional demand generation activities.
Modern transformation marketing also demands sophisticated understanding of digital channels and customer engagement preferences. During Adobe's transformation, the marketing team shifted from events-heavy spending to a digital-first approach, with 70% of budget allocated to digital channels.
What strategic priorities should marketing and business leaders consider when managing customer transformation?
Establish comprehensive customer feedback mechanisms - Create multiple channels for customer concerns and responses during transformation, investing in community management capabilities and specialists managing dialogue across forums and social media.
Develop cross-functional collaboration frameworks - Build marketing capabilities extending beyond lead generation to customer lifecycle management, restructuring teams to include customer success elements and recruiting subscription business expertise.
Balance transparency with confidence in communication strategies - Create messaging frameworks acknowledging transformation challenges while maintaining customer confidence, requiring leaders experienced in business model transitions and change management.
Invest in digital-first engagement approaches - Shift resource allocation to digital channels enabling scalable customer engagement during transformation, requiring changes to technology stacks and specialists in customer experience optimization.
Karen Lloyd, November 2025
About Karen Lloyd
As the founder and director behind our recruitment approach, I bring almost 30 years of unique expertise spanning both recruitment and marketing. Having placed my first candidate in 1996, I've since built 5 start-ups, served as a Board Director for 25 years, and developed recruitment strategies that work in competitive talent markets.
I'm also the host of "Spotlight on B2B Marketing", where I explore B2B marketing trends with industry leaders. My passion lies in helping global businesses grow their revenue-generating teams through strategic hiring and fractional CMO services.
About Armstrong Lloyd
Armstrong Lloyd goes above and beyond being a pure search firm - we partner with your business because we have all stood in your shoes as experienced hiring managers, marketing, and operational business leaders. We have a hidden network that goes beyond LinkedIn searches, adverts, or referrals from ex-colleagues to ensure you're getting the top 1% of talent.
Whether you need interim leadership, marketing team building, or executive search across the UK and beyond, the team at Armstrong Lloyd are here to ensure you reach your commercial business goals by building the best marketing team and strategy to give you a competitive advantage.
Ready to transform your marketing team? Let's talk about how we can help you hire the right talent at the right time.
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